168 ANIMALS AND PLANTS. [LBCT. 



express " the excessive minuteness of the granules in 

 question, and they estimate their diameter at less 

 than YTJCMXX) ^ an inch. Under the highest powers 

 of the microscope at present applicable such specks 

 are hardly discernible. Nevertheless, particles of this 

 size are massive when compared to physical molecules; 

 whence there is no reason to doubt that each, small as 

 it is, may have a molecular structure sufficiently com- 

 plex to give rise to the phenomena of life. And, as a 

 matter of fact, by patient watching of the place at 

 which these infinitesimal living particles were dis- 

 charged, our observers assured themselves of their 

 growth and development into new monads. These, 

 in about four hours from their being set free, had 

 attained a sixth of the length of the parent, with the 

 characteristic cilia, though at first they were quite 

 motionless ; and, in four hours more, they had attained 

 the dimensions and exhibited all the activity of the 

 adult. These inconceivably minute particles are 

 therefore the germs of the Heteromita ; and from the 

 dimensions of these germs it is easily shown that the 

 body formed by conjugation may, at a low estimate, 

 have given exit to thirty thousand of them ; a result 

 of a matrimonial process whereby the contracting 

 parties, without a metaphor, " become one flesh," 

 enough to make a Malthusian despair of the future of 

 the Universe. 



I am not aware that the investigators from whom 

 I have borrowed this history have endeavoured to 

 ascertain whether their monads take solid nutriment 

 or not ; so that though they help us very much to 



